This invention relates to low cost methods and apparatus for environmentally safe storage of discarded tires, and more particularly it relates to the stacking and storage in outdoor resident sites of flat rubber sections cut from discarded tires on transportable pallets in a configuration which does not accumulate water.
The disposal of discarded tires has been a problem in the past and is currently even more of a problem because of the proliferation of automobiles and the current custom of storing discarded tire carcasses in outdoor dumps where the hollow carcasses accumulate water and provide breeding sites for mosquitos. In the heavily populated Northeast United States the number of discarded tire carcasses is now significantly increasing at the same time that mosquito carried diseases have resulted in an encephalitis epidemic.
Thus, there have been significant problems with this conventional storage method without adequate remedy to the problem of accumulation of water in the carcasses that will substantially eradicate this significant environmental pollution hazard. It is undisputed that the accumulation of rainwater within tire carcasses provides an ideal environment for breeding mosquitos. Any solution to this problem requires a low cost compact bulk storage procedure of tire carcass rubber, in outside dumping sites in a format readily reclaimed at low cost for later use in rubber products. No such prior art storage-reclaiming process is now known.
There have been attempts to reclaim rubber tire treads cut from the discarded carcasses in a format for making specific rubber products in the prior art, but this has not resolved the problem of low cost interim bulk storage of tire carcasses at outdoor sites in a configuration that precludes accumulation of water.
Furthermore, known prior art methods of processing tire carcasses as raw rubber material for various products have been directed toward specific product configurations that can absorb the high processing costs for accumulating and storing tire carcass inventories in indoor and factory warehousing sites required to resolve the environmental hazard of accumulation of water to avoid taking carcasses from the conventional unprocessed bulk storage in outdoor sites, and have not considered a preliminary processing of tire carcasses for producing an interim safe bulk outdoor storage of tires in an environmentally safe condition that precludes the accumulation of water and associated breeding of mosquitos.
Thus the prior art resolution of the environmental problems would require accumulation of processed tire carcasses for bulk storage at covered warehouse sites, a procedure that would be economically unfeasible. Furthermore any prior art attempting to deform tire carcasses for storage as a raw material from which to process rubber products required an accumulation and compression of tire carcass rubber for storage in expensive containers requiring bolts, clamps and cages along with the accompanying container construction labor and accessory costs.
Thus an effective economical way to eliminate the accumulation of water in tire carcass raw rubber inventories stored in outside dumping sites is a significant problem.
The compact storage and stacking of discarded tire carcasses in the prior art has been given some attention, for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,321,931 issued on Jun. 21, 1994 to Yves J. Bluteau for METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR STORING USED TIRES; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,588,538 issued on Dec. 31, 1996 to Christopher Rundle, et al. for TIRE STACKING METHOD AND APPARATUS. These methods required costly accessory crates with internal posts for holding individual stacks of annular tire carcasses and gave no attention to the requirement for preventing accumulation of water in the stored tire carcasses.
Thus such prior art is not economically feasible for storage of discarded tire carcasses because of complex steps in cutting tires in half and compression of stacks of the annular tire carcasses into compact storable hatches in a manner requiring expensive jigs, bolts and clamps for compression and storage of the specially processed annular shaped tire carcass pieces in a desired compact storage condition.
Other background art has addressed the treatment of tire carcasses explicitly to provide a specific commercial product line, typically as set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 5,340,630, issued Aug. 23, 1994 to Benjamin A. Tripp for TWO PLY MATERIAL MADE FROM USED TIRES, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,834,083, issued to Alfred J. Pignataro, Jr. on Nov. 10, 1998 for USED TIRE RECYCLING INCLUDING SORTING TIRES, SHREDDING SIDEWALLS, STACKING TREAD STRIPS, AND UNIFORMLY DIMENSIONING AND BONDING THE TREAD STRIPS TOGETHER. Wherein tread strips are connected end to end to form longer belts with fastening devices holding the strips end-to-end.
These patents are not directed to the problems of outside bulk storage of tire carcasses in a format reducing environmental pollution and indeed consider the bulk storage of tire carcasses that accumulate water in outside dumps to be an acceptable practice.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,236,756, Aug. 17, 1993 by D. B. Halliburton for DRAINAGE CULVERTS MADE OF SIDEWALLS FROM DISCARDED TIRES compresses and stores stacks of sidewalls cut from tire carcasses in a rack having two steel end plates and a surrounding ring of steel rods threaded through a set of holes drilled through the sidewalls. Such a rack and method are cumbersome and expensive and therefore are not economically viable for outside bulk storage in dumping sites.
Accordingly this invention improves the prior art by providing inexpensive and effective environmentally safe methods and apparatus for outdoor storage of processed tire carcasses in a bulk configuration that precludes accumulation of water. The carcasses are processed by cutting discarded tire carcasses into sets of substantially flat storable sections for stacking on pallet platforms for compact outside bulk storage in a plurality of stacks that substantially cover the pallet platforms. The storable sections are stacked in rubber-to-rubber interfacing configurations producing frictional resistance against lateral movement of stacked sections on the pallet platform area thereby to stably withstand transportation of the pallets by fork lift truck to and from an outside bulk storage site. By covering substantially all of the loading platform areas with the storable sections stacked in the order of five feet high, substantially a ton of bulk rubber may be stored on each pallet. These loaded pallets are then moved to or reclaimed from an outdoor storage site with a fork lift truck, where the loaded pallets are stacked into a compact configuration.
When flat rectangular tread strips of specified width are cut from a carcass of a length greater than the length or width dimensions of a pallet storage platform, they may be folded into a length footprint configuration that does not accumulate water extending substantially between opposite pallet platform edges over a selected one of the length or width platform dimensions with a plurality of stacks abutted to substantially cover the loading platform areas edge to edge in the other platform dimension.
Flat treaded tire strips cut from the tire carcasses are dimensioned for stacking upon pallet load bearing platforms in a frictionally gripping inter-woven rubber-facing-rubber pattern that resists lateral movement during transport by fork lift trucks. Thus discarded tires are stored in a form for reclaiming the residual rubber when required for manufacturing or processing of a wide range of rubber containing products.
The methods and corresponding apparatus afforded by this invention are discussed in more detail throughout the following description, claims and the appended drawings.